Former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon Ordered No Harm Be Done to Arafat

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Yasser Arafat. Photo: Wiki Commons.

Raanan Gissin, a top aide to former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, said on Thursday the premier had ordered that no harm be done to now deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, denying allegations he was poisoned by Israel, AFP reported.

According to Al Jazeera, Swiss scientists concluded Arafat had probably died from polonium poisoning, prompting Palestinian Authority officials to call for an international inquiry into his “killing.”

“Ariel Sharon insisted that everything be done to ensure that Arafat, who was at the time living inside his besieged Muqataa compound, was not killed by our soldiers,” Raanan Gissin told AFP, in reference to a 2002-2004 Israeli siege of the president’s Ramallah headquarters.

“His instructions were to take every precaution to avoid Israel being accused of Arafat’s death,” Gissin told AFP.

“Instead of launching baseless accusations against Israel, the Palestinians would be better to question those in Arafat’s entourage who had an interest in his death and above all getting their hands on the money he controlled,” he said.

A Palestinian official on Thursday suggested “a state” was responsible for Arafat’s alleged poisoning, after test results on Arafat’s remains “proved Arafat was poisoned by polonium, and this substance is owned by states, not people, meaning that the crime was committed by a state,” Wasel Abu Yusef, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, told AFP.

“Just as a committee was formed to investigate the killing of [slain Lebanese prime minister] Rafiq Hariri, there must be a international committee to investigate the killing of president Arafat,” he told AFP.

Arafat died at a French military hospital near Paris in November 2004 at the age of 75, with experts unable to say what killed him.

Israel’s foreign ministry described the allegations as a long-running “soap opera” and suggesting the various investigations were not impartial, AFP reported.